"No, Fourth Silicon Valley, which is rife with Hipsters and social rejects, will not mine asteroids. But I think that the Fifth Silicon Valley very well could!"

Yes, if Andrew Carnegie were alive today, he would live in Mountain View and call his company "Smeltly" rather than US Steel. But the ingathering of brainpower in the area will bring us new projects Let's allow them to bring an end to California's drought with cheap desalination.

Question: Are you one and the same as the GayWad guy and the Moo Cow guy?

Now I'll be able to reach my monthly bandwidth cap in minutes, not hours.

Japan being a high-tech nation with a much smaller land area, they're going to genetically engineer a bioconcentrator that will mop up the cesium in their exclusion zone long before the 25 years is up.

Nature points the way: http://pelagiaresearchlibrary....

"Multiple exclamation marks is one of the most grievous grammatical gaffes generated these days."

It's considered such bad form today that even the UK Daily Mail has stopped doing it.

All states, so far as I know, have the option of posting a bond instead of getting mandatory auto insurance. If self-driving cars are going to be mostly owned by manufacturers and leasing companies, they might find the bonding option a savings over insurance because the risk is being spread over a big fleet of cars. Since that's all that insurance companies do, the reasoning will be, "Let's post our own bonds, pocketing the profit that would ordinarily go to some insurance company."

One surprisingly bike-friendly city is Phoenix, which offers several hundred miles of off-road bike paths. And there may be only one train line, but it does go to the airport.

Something tells me that even if there were snow removal on the bikeways, they're going to be deserted in the winter. And when it rains. Not exactly my idea of a commuter traffic reliever.

"If a Scotsman commits rape in France, he may be tried in England."

No true Scotsman would commit rape in France.

"how do I get to be a multinational corporation so I can tell local authorities to fuck off too?"

France is free to make it illegal for its citizens to use Google. This would be the kind of money pit bureacrats love, like British TV licensing.

Let Paris implement its own Grand mur de la France, behind which it can spend what it takes on a search engine with a Forget Me feature.

My point is that Sri Lanka does not have Albuquerque's ideal ballooning wind pattern, so the envisioned usage for broadband distribution is going to be even more problematic.

You're going to blow up a planet of dyslexics?

""Crappy power" is normal. Manufacturers need to design for that. "

Get a UPS.

First, you have to be really lucky to find a place that has directly opposig winds at different nearby altitudes. This is what makes Albuquerque such a favorite place for ballooning.

Then...what happens to your broadband signal as the balloon changes altitude while whiffling all over the place trying to keep station?